Please give a bot bit to SieBot, so it will not flood your RC as it adds interwiki links using pywikipedia's interwiki.py. SieBot is active on 200 Wikipedias. See the user page of the bot for more details, or check a complete overview of its activities here. Cheers! Siebrand (talk) Siebrand 16:24, 18 ngonda ya nana 2007 (UTC)

List of botflags on others wikipedias: about 100+ atm (see meta:User:Multichill for the current list)

Purpose: Interwiki (pywikipedia)

Technical details : BotMultichill is an interwiki bot starting at the Dutch wikipedia. The bot uses the pywikipedia framework and runs day and night in autonomous mode. Sometimes the bot will run in manual assisted mode to solve interwiki conflicts.

Hello. To facilitate steward granting of bot access, I suggest implementing the standard bot policy on this wiki. In particular, this policy allows stewards to automatically flag known interlanguage linking bots (if this page says that is acceptable), which form the vast majority of such requests. The policy also enables global bots on this wiki (if this page says that is acceptable), which are trusted bots that will be given bot access on every wiki that allows global bots.

This policy makes bot access requesting much easier for local users, operators, and stewards. To implement it we only need to create a redirect to this page from Project:Bot policy, and add a line at the top noting that it is used here. Please read the text at m:Bot policy before commenting. If you object, please say so; I hope to implement in one week if there is no objection, since it is particularly written to streamline bot requests on wikis with little or no community interested in bot access requests. Malafaya 10:13, 15 ngonda ya uvwa 2008 (UTC)

Hello. To facilitate steward granting of bot access, I suggest implementing the standard bot policy on this wiki. In particular, this policy allows stewards to automatically flag known interlanguage linking bots (if this page says that is acceptable), which form the vast majority of such requests. The policy also enables global bots on this wiki (if this page says that is acceptable), which are trusted bots that will be given bot access on every wiki that allows global bots.

This policy makes bot access requesting much easier for local users, operators, and stewards. To implement it we only need to create a redirect to this page from Project:Bot policy, and add a line at the top noting that it is used here. Please read the text at m:Bot policy before commenting. If you object, please say so; I hope to implement in one week if there is no objection, since it is particularly written to streamline bot requests on wikis with little or no community interested in bot access requests. Luckas Blade 14:45, 1 ngonda ya tatu 2009 (UTC)

The LocalisationUpdate extension is now enabled for all Wikimedia projects. From now on new localisations that become available in SVN will become available to your project within 24 hours. Your localisations get into SVN from translatewiki.net typically within a day and at worst in two days. This is a huge improvement from the old practice where the localisations became available with new software. This could take weeks, even months.

The localisations done by our community at translatewiki.net are committed to SVN typically every day. When the system messages in English are the same as the local messages, they will now be inserted in a file and are available for use in all our projects in a timely manner

Local messages have an impact on the performance of our system. It is best when messages are as much as possible part of the system messages. In order to remove unnecessary duplication, all the messages that have a local localisation and are exactly the same as the system message will be removed. What we ask you to do is to compare and proof read the messages in translatewiki.net and the local messages. You can then either remove local messages when the translatewiki.net message is to be preferred or, you can update the message at translatewiki.net.

Messages that are specific to your project will have to stay as they are. You do want to check if the format and the variables of the message are still the same.

When you localise at translatewiki.net, your messages will be used in all Wikimedia projects and eventually in all MediaWiki based projects. This is how we provide the standard support for your language. When messages change, at translatewiki.net you will be prompted to revisit your translations. Localising is more efficient because we have innovated the process to make you more efficient; there is text explaining about messages and we have applied AJAX technology to reduce the number of clicks you have to make.

Currently 4.00% of the MediaWiki messages and 0.00% of the messages of the extensions used by the Wikimedia Foundation projects have been localised. Please help us help your language by localising and proof reading at translatewiki.net. This is the recent localisation activity for your language. Thanks, GerardM 09:19, 30 ngonda ya uvwa 2009 (UTC)

Currently 3.98% of the MediaWiki messages and 0.00% of the messages of the extensions used by the Wikimedia Foundation projects have been localised. Please help us help your language by localising and proof reading at translatewiki.net. This is the recent localisation activity for your language. Thanks, GerardM 12:24, 1 ngonda ya kumi na mosi 2009 (UTC)

Currently 4.06% of the MediaWiki messages and 0.00% of the messages of the extensions used by the Wikimedia Foundation projects have been localised. Please help us help your language by localising and proof reading at translatewiki.net. This is the recent localisation activity for your language. Thanks, GerardM 14:57, 7 ngonda ya kumi na zole 2009 (UTC)

Currently 4.05% of the MediaWiki messages and 0.00% of the messages of the extensions used by the Wikimedia Foundation projects have been localised. Please help us help your language by localising and proof reading at translatewiki.net. This is the recent localisation activity for your language. Thanks, GerardM 13:15, 11 ngonda ya ntete 2010 (UTC)

We expect that with the implementation of LocalisationUpdate the usability of MediaWiki for your language will improve. We are now ready to look at other aspects of usability for your language as well. There are two questions we would like you to answer: Are there issues with the new functionality of the Usability Initiative Does MediaWiki support your language properly

The best way to answer the first question is to visit the translatewiki.net. Change the language to your language, select the “vector” skin and add the advanced tool bar in in the preferences and check out the new functionality. And make some changes in your user page. When there is a need to improve on the localisation, please make the necessary changess . It should update your localisation straight away. We would like you to report each issue individually at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_issues .

When there are problems with the support of MediaWiki for your language, we really want to know about this. It is best to report each issue separately. In this way there will be no large mass of issues to resolve but we can address each issue on its own. Consider issues with the display of characters, the presentation of your script, the position of the side bar, the combination of text with other languages, scripts. It is best to try this in an environment like the prototype wiki as it provides you with a clean, basic and up to date environment. The prototype wiki is available for five languages but you can select any of them, change the preferences to your language and test out MediaWiki for your language.

We would like you to report each issue individually at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_issues . The issues you raise will all be assessed. It is important to keep each issue separate, because this will make it easier to understand the issues and find solutions.

Hello! I am a Polish wikipedian and I would like to ask you for your help - writing a new article about former Polish President who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 – Lech Wałęsa. I have looked for his biography in your Wikipedia but without success. Polish Wikipedians will be grateful for your help. Thank you so much in advance! PS you can find the English version of the article here. Best wishes from Poland, Patrol110 11:54, 25 ngonda ya kumi na zole 2009 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation recently updated the official Wikipedia globe. We realize that a lot of projects have never had a localized logo in their native language, so we are making sure that we create logos for every Wikipedia project that we have. The only issue is: we can't figure out what should be on your localized logo. :-)

Hello Wikipedians, I am Theo and I am working for the Wikimedia Foundation during the 2010 Fundraiser. My job is to be the liaison between your community and the Foundation. This year's fundraiser is intended to be a collaborative and global effort; we recognize that banner messages which may perform well in the United States don't necessarily translate well, or appeal to international audiences.

I'm contacting you as I am currently looking for translators who are willing to contribute to this project by helping translate and localize messages into different languages and suggesting messages that would appeal to your readers on the Fundraising Meta Page. We've started the setup on meta for both banner submission, statistical analysis, and grouping volunteers together.
Use the talk pages on meta, talk to your local communities, talk to others, talk to us, and add your feedback to the proposed messages as well! I look forward to working with you during this year's fundraiser. If someone could translate this message I would really appreciate it so that everyone is able to understand our goals and contribute to this year's campaign.Theo (WMF) 20:45, 20 ngonda ya kumi 2010 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation, at the direction of the Board of Trustees, will be holding a vote to determine whether members of the community support the creation and usage of an opt-in personal image filter, which would allow readers to voluntarily screen particular types of images strictly for their own account.

Further details and educational materials will be available shortly. The referendum is scheduled for 12-27 August, 2011, and will be conducted on servers hosted by a neutral third party. Referendum details, officials, voting requirements, and supporting materials will be posted at Meta:Image filter referendum shortly.

Sorry for delivering you a message in English. Please help translate the pages on the referendum on Meta and join the translators mailing list.

I apologize that you are receiving this message in English. Please help translate it.

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is discussing changes to its Terms of Use. The discussion can be found at Talk:Terms of use. Everyone is invited to join in. Because the new version of Terms of use is not in final form, we are not able to present official translations of it. Volunteers are welcome to translate it, as German volunteers have done at m:Terms of use/de, but we ask that you note at the top that the translation is unofficial and may become outdated as the English version is changed. The translation request can be found at m:Translation requests/WMF/Terms of Use 2 -- Maggie Dennis, Community Liaison 00:58, 27 ngonda ya kumi 2011 (UTC)

I apologize that you are receiving this message in English. Please help translate it.

Do you want to help attract new contributors to Wikimedia projects?

Do you want to improve retention of our existing editors?

Do you want to strengthen our community by diversifying its base and increasing the overall number of excellent participants around the world?

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking Community Fellows and project ideas for the Community Fellowship Program. A Fellowship is a temporary position at the Wikimedia Foundation in order to work on a specific project or set of projects. Submissions for 2012 are encouraged to focus on the theme of improving editor retention and increasing participation in Wikimedia projects. If interested, please submit a project idea or apply to be a fellow by January 15, 2012. Please visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships for more information.

New common*.css files usable by skins instead of having to copy piles of generic styles from MonoBook or Vector's css.

The default user signature now contains a talk link in addition to the user link.

Searching blocked usernames in block log is now clearer.

Better timezone recognition in user preferences.

Improved diff readability for colorblind people.

The interwiki links table can now be accessed also when the interwiki cache is used (used in the API and the Interwiki extension).

More gender support (for instance in logs and user lists).

Language converter improved, e.g. it now works depending on the page content language.

Time and number-formatting magic words also now depend on the page content language.

Bidirectional support further improved after 1.18.

Report any problems on the labs beta wiki and we'll work to address them before they software is released to the production wikis.

Note that this cluster does have SUL but it is not integrated with SUL in production, so you'll need to create another account. You should avoid using the same password as you use here. — Global message delivery 16:18, 15 ngonda ya ntete 2012 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation has brought together a new team of developers who are dedicated to language support. This team is to support all the languages and consequently it is not realistic to expect that the team members can provide proper support for your language. It is for this reason that we are looking for volunteers who will make up a language support team.

This language support team will be asked to provide us with information about their language. Such information may need to be provided either to us or on a website that we will indicate to you. Another activity will be to test software that will likely have an effect on the running of the MediaWiki software. We are looking for people who clearly identify their ability. Formal knowledge is definitely appreciated.

As much of the activity will be concentrated on translatewiki.net, it will be a plus when team members know how to localise at translatewiki.net.
Thanks, Gmeijssen 16:21, 19 ngonda ya ntete 2012 (UTC)

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language.) The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to upgrade MediaWiki (the software powering this wiki) to its latest version this month. You can help to test it before it is enabled, to avoid disruption and breakage. More information is available in the full announcement. Thank you for your understanding.

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to do limited testing of IPv6 on June 2-3. If there are not too many problems, we may fully enable IPv6 on World IPv6 day (June 6), and keep it enabled.

What this means for your project:

At least on June 2-3, 2012, you may see a small number of edits from IPv6 addresses, which are in the form "2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334". See e.g. w:en:IPv6 address. These addresses should behave like any other IP address: You can leave messages on their talk pages; you can track their contributions; you can block them. (See the full version of this announcement for notes on range blocks.)

In the mid term, some user scripts and tools will need to be adapted for IPv6.

We suspect that IPv6 usage is going to be very low initially, meaning that abuse should be manageable, and we will assist in the monitoring of the situation.

Read the full version of this announcement on how to test the behavior of IPv6 with various tools and how to leave bug reports, and to find a fuller analysis of the implications of the IPv6 migration.

Wikimedia Commons is happy to announce that the 2011 Picture of the Year competition is now open. We are interested in your opinion as to which images qualify to be the Picture of the Year 2011. Any user registered at Commons or a Wikimedia wiki SUL-related to Commons with more than 75 edits before 1 April 2012 (UTC) is welcome to vote and, of course everyone is welcome to view!

About 600 of the best of Wikimedia Common's photos, animations, movies and graphics were chosen –by the international Wikimedia Commons community– out of 12 million files during 2011 and are now called Featured Pictures.

From professional animal and plant shots to breathtaking panoramas and skylines, restorations of historically relevant images, images portraying the world's best architecture, maps, emblems, diagrams created with the most modern technology, and impressive human portraits, Commons Features Pictures of all flavors.

Help decide about more than $10 million of Wikimedia donations in the coming year[soba | edit source]

As many of you are aware, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees recently initiated important changes in the way that money is being distributed within the Wikimedia movement. As part of this, a new community-led "Funds Dissemination Committee" (FDC) is currently being set up. Already in 2012-13, its recommendations will guide the decisions about the distribution of over 10 million US dollars among the Foundation, chapters and other eligible entities.

Now, seven capable, knowledgeable and trustworthy community members are sought to volunteer on the initial Funds Dissemination Committee. It is expected to take up its work in September. In addition, a community member is sought to be the Ombudsperson for the FDC process. If you are interested in joining the committee, read the call for volunteers. Nominations are planned to close on August 15.

More opportunities for you to access free research databases[soba | edit source]

The quest to get editors free access to the sources they need is gaining momentum.

Credo Reference provides full-text online versions of nearly 1200 published reference works from more than 70 publishers in every major subject, including general and subject dictionaries and encyclopedias. There are 125 full Credo 350 accounts available, with access even to 100 more references works than in Credo's original donation. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

HighBeam Research has access to over 80 million articles from 6,500 publications including newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines and encyclopedias. Thousands of new articles are added daily, and archives date back over 25 years covering a wide range of subjects and industries. There are 250 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

Questia is an online research library for books and journal articles focusing on the humanities and social sciences. Questia has curated titles from over 300 trusted publishers including 77,000 full-text books and 4 million journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, as well as encyclopedia entries. There will soon be 1000 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

You might also be interested in the idea to create a central Wikipedia Library where approved editors would have access to all participating resource donors. Add your feedback to the Community Fellowship proposal. Apologies for the English message (translate here). Go sign up :) --Ocaasi (talk) 02:17, 16 ngonda ya nana 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for addressing you in English. I would be grateful if you could translate this message into your language.

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a request for comment on a proposed program that could provide legal assistance to users in specific support roles who are named in a legal complaint as a defendant because of those roles. We wanted to be sure that your community was aware of this discussion and would have a chance to participate in that discussion.

If this page is not the best place to publicize this request for comment, please help spread the word to those who may be interested in participating. (If you'd like to help translating the "request for comment", program policy or other pages into your language and don't know how the translation system works, please come by my user talk page at m:User talk:Mdennis (WMF). I'll be happy to assist or to connect you with a volunteer who can assist.)

As some of you might already have heard Wikimedia Deutschland is working on a new Wikimedia project. It is called m:Wikidata. The goal of Wikidata is to become a central data repository for the Wikipedias, its sister projects and the world. In the future it will hold data like the number of inhabitants of a country, the date of birth of a famous person or the length of a river. These can then be used in all Wikimedia projects and outside of them.

The project is divided into three phases and "we are getting close to roll-out the first phase". The phases are:

language links in the Wikipedias (making it possible to store the links between the language editions of an article just once in Wikidata instead of in each linked article)

infoboxes (making it possible to store the data that is currently in infoboxes in one central place and share the data)

lists (making it possible to create lists and similar things based on queries to Wikidata so they update automatically when new data is added or modified)

It'd be great if you could join us, test the demo version, provide feedback and take part in the development of Wikidata. You can find all the relevant information including an FAQ and sign-up links for our on-wiki newsletter on the Wikidata page on Meta.

For further discussions please use this talk page (if you are uncomfortable writing in English you can also write in your native language there) or point me to the place where your discussion is happening so I can answer there.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Fundraising team have begun our 'User Experience' project, with the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries outside the USA and enhancing the localization of our donation pages. I am searching for volunteers to spend 30 minutes on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.

The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real-time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)

By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. Please sing up and help us with our 'User Experience' project! :) If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!

Thank you to everyone who volunteered last year on the Wikimedia fundraising 'User Experience' project. We have talked to many different people in different countries and their feedback has helped us immensely in restructuring our pages. If you haven't heard of it yet, the 'User Experience' project has the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries (outside the USA) and enhancing the localization of our donation pages.

I am (still) searching for volunteers to spend some time on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.

The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. **All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be very low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)**

By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!!

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language.) Next week, the Wikimedia Foundation will transition its main technical operations to a new data center in Ashburn, Virginia, USA. This is intended to improve the technical performance and reliability of all Wikimedia sites, including this wiki. There will be some times when the site will be in read-only mode, and there may be full outages; the current target windows for the migration are January 22nd, 23rd and 24th, 2013, from 17:00 to 01:00 UTC (see other timezones on timeanddate.com). More information is available in the full announcement.

I apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.

Do you have an idea for a project to improve this community or website?

Do you think you could complete your idea if only you had some funding?

Do you want to help other people turn their ideas into project plans or grant proposals?

Please join us in the IdeaLab, an incubator for project ideas and Individual Engagement Grant proposals.

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking new ideas and proposals for Individual Engagement Grants. These grants fund individuals or small groups to complete projects that help improve this community. If interested, please submit a completed proposal by February 15, 2013. Please visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG for more information.

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this locally.

Wikidata has been in development for a few months now. It is now time for the roll-out of the first part of it on your Wikipedia. Phase 1 is the support for the management of language links. It is already being used on the Hungarian, Hebrew, Italian and English Wikipedias. The next step is to enable the extension on all other Wikipedias. We have currently planned this for March 6.

Wikidata is a central place to store data that you can usually find in infoboxes. Think of it as something like Wikimedia Commons but for data (like the number of inhabitants of a country or the length of a river) instead of multimedia. The first part of this project (centralizing language links) is being rolled out now. The more fancy things will follow later.

Language links in the sidebar are going to come from Wikidata in addition to the ones in the wiki text. To edit them, scroll to the bottom of the language links, and click edit. You no longer need to maintain these links by hand in the wiki text of the article.

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this locally. If you understand German better than English you can have a look at the announcement on de:Wikipedia:Kurier.

As I annonced 2 weeks ago, Wikidata phase 1 (language links) has been deployed here today. Language links in the sidebar are coming from Wikidata in addition to the ones in the wiki text. To edit them, scroll to the bottom of the language links, and click edit. You no longer need to maintain these links by hand in the wiki text of the article.

Convert complex templates to Lua to make them faster and more powerful[soba | edit source]

(Please consider translating this message for the benefit of your fellow Wikimedians)

Greetings. As you might have seen on the Wikimedia tech blog or the tech ambassadors list, a new functionality called "Lua" is being enabled on all Wikimedia sites today. Lua is a scripting language that enables you to write faster and more powerful MediaWiki templates.

If you have questions about how to convert existing templates to Lua (or how to create new ones), we'll be holding two support sessions on IRC next week: one on Wednesday (for Oceania, Asia & America) and one on Friday (for Europe, Africa & America); see m:IRC office hours for the details. If you can't make it, you can also get help at mw:Talk:Lua scripting.

If you'd like to learn about this kind of events earlier in advance, consider becoming a Tech ambassador by subscribing to the mailing list. You will also be able to help your fellow Wikimedians have a voice in technical discussions and be notified of important decisions.

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this. If you understand German better than English you can have a look at the announcement on de:Wikipedia:Kurier.

A while ago the first phase of Wikidata was enabled on this Wikipedia. This means you are getting the language links in each article from Wikidata. It is soon time to enable the second phase of Wikidata (infoboxes) here. We have already done this on the [first 11 Wikipedias] (it, he, hu, ru, tr, uk, uz, hr, bs, sr, sh) and things are looking good. The next step is English Wikipedia. This is planned for April 8. If everything works out fine we will deploy on all remaining Wikipedias on April 10. I will update this part of the FAQ if there are any issues forcing us to change this date. I will also sent another note to this village pump once the deployment is finished.

What will happen once we have phase 2 enabled here? Once it is enabled in a few days you will be able to make use of the structured data that is available on Wikidata in your articles/infoboxes. It includes things like the symbol for a chemical element, the ISBN for a book or the top level domain of a country. (None of this will happen automatically. Someone will have to change the article or infobox template for this to happen!)

Please translate w:HIV/AIDS into Kikongo/Kituba. A simplified version can be found on simple:AIDS -- it's ok to just translate the simple version. Of course, you don't have to translate if you don't want to.. PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:36, 10 ngonda ya iya 2013 (UTC)

There is a new request for comment on Meta-Wiki concerning the removal of administrative rights from long-term inactive Wikimedians. Generally, this proposal from stewards would apply to wikis without an administrators' review process.

We are also compiling a list of projects with procedures for removing inactive administrators on the talk page of the request for comment. Feel free to add your project(s) to the list if you have a policy on administrator inactivity.

All input is appreciated. The discussion may close as soon as 21 May 2013 (2013-05-21), but this will be extended if needed.

Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this. If you understand German better than English you can have a look at the announcement on de:Wikipedia:Kurier.

A while ago the first phase of Wikidata was enabled on this Wikipedia. This means you are getting the language links in each article from Wikidata. We have now enabled the second phase of Wikidata (infoboxes) here. We have already done this on the [first 11 Wikipedias] (it, he, hu, ru, tr, uk, uz, hr, bs, sr, sh) a month ago and two days ago on the English Wikipedia. Today all the remaining Wikipedias followed.

What does having phase 2 enabled here mean? You are now able to make use of the structured data that is available on Wikidata in your articles/infoboxes. It includes things like the symbol for a chemical element, the ISBN for a book or the top level domain of a country. (None of this will happen automatically. Someone will have to change the article or infobox template for this to happen!) The current state is just the beginning though. It will be extended based on feedback we get from you now.

The default position of the "edit" link in page section headers is going to change soon. The "edit" link will be positioned adjacent to the page header text rather than floating opposite it.

Section edit links will be to the immediate right of section titles, instead of on the far right. If you're an editor of one of the wikis which already implemented this change, nothing will substantially change for you; however, scripts and gadgets depending on the previous implementation of section edit links will have to be adjusted to continue working; however, nothing else should break even if they are not updated in time.

Ideas to do this all the way to 2009 at least. It is often difficult to track which of several potential section edit links on the far right is associated with the correct section, and many readers and anonymous or new editors may even be failing to notice section edit links at all, since they read section titles, which are far away from the links.

Latest Tech news from the Wikimedia technical community.Please inform other users about these changes.

Recent software changes

(Not all changes will affect you.)

The latest version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf4) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and to the English Wikipedia (with a Wikidata software update) on May 20. It will be updated on all other Wikipedia sites on May 22. [1][2]

A software update will perhaps result in temporary issues with images. Please report any problems you notice. [3]

MediaWiki recognizes links in twelve new schemes. Users can now link to SSH, XMPP and Bitcoin directly from wikicode. [4]

The next version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf5) will be added to Wikimedia sites starting on May 27. [11]

An updated version of Notifications, with new features and fewer bugs, will be added to the English Wikipedia on May 23. [12]

The final version of the "single user login" (which allows people to use the same username on different Wikimedia wikis) is moved to August 2013. The software will automatically rename some usernames. [13]

Hello! As part of the update of Wikipedias logos to the new (2010) 3D puzzle globe version, we have noticed that your wiki's current logo is missing, outdated or with wrong translation. We are trying to help Wikipedias get a locally-adapted correct logo, by taking the technical difficulties on us, and in about a week from now we'll be replacing the current logo with the new one shown in this gallery, with explanation. If the translation is wrong, or there's another error in the new logo, or the community disagrees with the update, please update the list of logos or tell us on its talk page. Feel free to translate this message and to move/copy/forward it where appropriate. Thanks, Nemo 13:01, 27 ngônda ya tânu 2013 (UTC) (Distributed via Global message delivery: wrong page? correct the list of targets.)

Hi, apologies for posting this in English, but I wanted to alert your community to a discussion on Meta about potential changes to the Wikimedia Trademark Policy. Please translate this statement if you can. We hope that you will all participate in the discussion; we also welcome translations of the legal team’s statement into as many languages as possible and encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please see the Trademark practices discussion (on Meta-Wiki) for more information. Thank you! --Mdennis (WMF) (talk)

The Wikipedia Library gets Wikipedia editors free access to reliable sources that are behind paywalls. I want to alert you to our latest donation.

Cochrane Collaboration is an independent medical nonprofit organization that conducts systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health-care interventions, which it then publishes in the Cochrane Library.

Cochrane has generously agreed to give free, full-access accounts to medical editors. Individual access would otherwise cost between $300 and $800 per account.

On July 9, 2013, Universal Language Selector (ULS) will be enabled on this wiki. The ULS provides a flexible way to configure and deliver language settings like interface language, fonts, and input methods (keyboard mappings). Making it available here is the last phase of making ULS available on all Wikimedia wikis.

Hello, Sorry for English but It's very important for bot operators so I hope someone translates this. Pywikipedia is migrating to Git so after July 26, SVN checkouts won't be updated If you're using Pywikipedia you have to switch to git, otherwise you will use out-dated framework and your bot might not work properly. There is a manual for doing that and a blog post explaining about this change in non-technical language. If you have question feel free to ask in mw:Manual talk:Pywikipediabot/Gerrit, mailing list, or in the IRC channel. Best Amir(via Global message delivery). 13:25, 23 ngônda ya nsambwâdi 2013 (UTC)

We want to find out as much as we can from you about VisualEditor and how it helps your Wikipedia, and having local pages is a great way to start. We also encourage you to leave feedback on Mediawiki where the community can offer ideas, opinions, and point out bugs that may still exist in the software that need to be reported to Bugzilla. If you are able to speak for the concerns of others in English on MediaWiki or locally I encourage you to help your community to be represented in this process.

If you can help translate the user interface for VisualEditor to your language, you can help with that as well. Translatewiki has open tasks for translating VisualEditor. A direct link to translate the user interface is here. You can see how we are doing with those translations here. You need an account on Translatewiki to translate. This account is free and easy to create.

If we can help your community in any way with this process, please let me know and I will do my best to assist your Wikipedia with this |exciting development. You can contact me on my meta talk page or by email. You can also contact Patrick Earley for help with translations and documents on Mediawiki. We look forward to working with you to bring the VisualEditor experience to your Wikipedia! Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 30 ngônda ya nsambwâdi 2013 (UTC)

Greetings. Starting on August 21 (tomorrow), all users with an account will be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. HTTPS brings better security and improves your privacy. More information is available at m:HTTPS.

If HTTPS causes problems for you, tell us on bugzilla, on IRC (in the #wikimedia-operations channel) or on meta. If you can't use the other methods, you can also send an e-mail to https@wikimedia.org.

First, I’d like to apologize for the English. If you can, please help to translate this for other members of your community.

The legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation would greatly appreciate your input on the best way to manage the "community logo" (pictured here) to best balance protection of the projects with community support. Accordingly, they have created a “request for consultation” on Meta where they set out briefly some of the issues to be considered and the options that they perceive. Your input would be invaluable in helping guide them in how best to serve our mission.

Notifications inform you of new activity that affects you -- and let you take quick action.

(This message is in English, please translate as needed)

Greetings!

Notifications will inform users about new activity that affects them on this wiki in a unified way: for example, this new tool will let you know when you have new talk page messages, edit reverts, mentions or links -- and is designed to augment (rather than replace) the watchlist. The Wikimedia Foundation's editor engagement team developed this tool (code-named 'Echo') earlier this year, to help users contribute more productively to MediaWiki projects.

We're now getting ready to bring Notifications to almost all other Wikimedia sites, and are aiming for a 22 October deployment, as outlined in this release plan. It is important that notifications is translated for all of the languages we serve.

There are three major points of translation needed to be either done or checked:

Notifications help on mediawiki.org. This page can be hosted after translation on mediawiki.org or we can localize it to this Wikipedia. You do not have to have an account to translate on mediawiki, but single-user login will create it for you there if you follow the link.

Speak up about the trademark registration of the Community logo.[soba | edit source]

This community consultation was commenced on September 24. The following day, two individuals filed a legal opposition against the registration of the Community logo.

The question is whether the Wikimedia Foundation should seek a collective membership mark with respect to this logo or abandon its registration and protection of the trademark.

We want to make sure that everyone get a chance to speak up so that we can get clear direction from the community. We would therefore really appreciate the community's help in translating this announcement from English so that everyone is able to understand it.

We would like to let you know about Beta Features, a new program from the Wikimedia Foundation that lets you try out new features before they are released for everyone.

Think of it as a digital laboratory where community members can preview upcoming software and give feedback to help improve them. This special preference page lets designers and engineers experiment with new features on a broad scale, but in a way that's not disruptive.

Beta Features is now ready for testing on MediaWiki.org. It will also be released on Wikimedia Commons and MetaWiki this Thursday, 7 November. Based on test results, the plan is to release it on all wikis worldwide on 21 November, 2013.

Would you like to try out Beta Features now? After you log in on MediaWiki.org, a small 'Beta' link will appear next to your 'Preferences'. Click on it to see features you can test, check the ones you want, then click 'Save'. Learn more on the Beta Features page.

Beta Features was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation's Design, Multimedia and VisualEditor teams. Along with other developers, they will be adding new features to this experimental program every few weeks. They are very grateful to all the community members who helped create this project — and look forward to many more productive collaborations in the future.

Hello. Please excuse the English. I would be grateful if you can translate this message!

VisualEditor is coming to this project on December 2, 2013. VisualEditor is software in development to allow people to edit pages in MediaWiki without needing to learn wikitext syntax (like typing [[ to start a link). It is already available and in use on some Wikipedia projects. Please see mw:Help:VisualEditor/FAQ for more information.

When this software arrives, you will have the option to use it or to use the current wikitext editor. When you press “edit”, you will get the new VisualEditor software. To use the wikitext editor, you can press “edit source”. For more information about how to use VisualEditor, see mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide.

We hope that this software will be useful to people in your community, and we can really use your help to make it better! Please let us know if you find any problems. If you're willing and able, please report the issue in bugzilla in the "VisualEditor" product. If you would prefer not, please explain the issue you found on the central feedback page on mediawiki.org. Once VisualEditor is made available, if there are any urgent problems, like an unexpected bug suddenly causing widespread severe problems, please e-mail James Forrester, the Product Manager, at jforrester@wikimedia.org for immediate attention.

We would also appreciate help with translation with the pages about VisualEditor here and on MediaWiki.org, and its user interface. To translate the user interface, start by creating an account at TranslateWiki. Once your account request is approved, all you need to do is select your language from this list. This will give you a list of individual lines and paragraphs. The English original will be on one side, with the option to “edit” on the other. Pressing “edit” will open an edit window where you can work.

The User Guide is another important document. To translate this, simply go to the MediaWiki.org page, and select “translate this page”. Your language should be available from the drop-down menu on the right. If you want to help with translations and would like to talk about how, please leave a message for me on my talk page.

The Wikimedia legal team invites you to participate in the development of the new Wikimedia trademark policy.

The current trademark policy was introduced in 2009 to protect the Wikimedia marks. We are now updating this policy to better balance permissive use of the marks with the legal requirements for preserving them for the community. The new draft trademark policy is ready for your review here, and we encourage you to discuss it here.

We would appreciate if someone would translate this message into your language so more members of your community can contribute to the conversation.

Request for comment on Commons: Should Wikimedia support MP4 video?[soba | edit source]

I apologize for this message being only in English. Please translate it if needed to help your community.

The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team seeks community guidance on a proposal to support the MP4 video format. This digital video standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch videos on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is also known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC.

Supporting the MP4 format would make it much easier for our users to view and contribute video on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects -- and video files could be offered in dual formats on our sites, so we could continue to support current open formats (WebM and Ogg Theora).

However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary format would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting open formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have acceptable legal terms, with only a small fee required.

We would appreciate your guidance on whether or not to support MP4. Our Request for Comments presents views both in favor and against MP4 support, based on opinions we’ve heard in our discussions with community and team members.

All users are welcome to participate, whether you are active on Commons, Wikipedia, other Wikimedia project -- or any site that uses content from our free media repository.

You are also welcome to join tomorrow's Office hours chat on IRC, this Thursday, January 16, at 19:00 UTC, if you would like to discuss this project with our team and other community members.

We look forward to a constructive discussion with you, so we can make a more informed decision together on this important topic. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:46, 16 ngônda ya ntete 2014 (UTC)

Universal Language Selector will be enabled by default again on this wiki by 21 February 2014[soba | edit source]

On January 21 2014 the MediaWiki extension Universal Language Selector (ULS) was disabled on this wiki. A new preference was added for logged-in users to turn on ULS. This was done to prevent slow loading of pages due to ULS webfonts, a behaviour that had been observed by the Wikimedia Technical Operations team on some wikis.

We are now ready to enable ULS again. The temporary preference to enable ULS will be removed. A new checkbox has been added to the Language Panel to enable/disable font delivery. This will be unchecked by default for this wiki, but can be selected at any time by the users to enable webfonts. This is an interim solution while we improve the feature of webfonts delivery.

Please join a discussion about a proposed amendment to the Wikimedia Terms of Use regarding undisclosed paid editing and we encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please translate this statement if you can, and we welcome you to translate the proposed amendment and introduction. Please see the discussion on Meta Wiki for more information. Thank you! Slaporte (WMF) 22:00, 21 ngônda ya zôle 2014 (UTC)

Call for project ideas: funding is available for community experiments[soba | edit source]

I apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.

Do you have an idea for a project that could improve your community? Individual Engagement Grants from the Wikimedia Foundation help support individuals and small teams to organize experiments for 6 months. You can get funding to try out your idea for online community organizing, outreach, tool-building, or research to help make Wikipedia better. In March, we’re looking for new project proposals.

Hello all, in response to some community comments in the discussion on the amendment to the Terms of Use on undisclosed paid editing, we have prepared two optional changes. Please read about these optional changes on Meta wiki and share your comments. If you can (and this is a non english project), please translate this announcement. Thanks! Slaporte (WMF) 21:56, 13 ngônda ya tatu 2014 (UTC)

This week, the typography on Wikimedia sites will be updated for all readers and editors who use the default "Vector" skin. This change will involve new serif fonts for some headings, small tweaks to body content fonts, text size, text color, and spacing between elements. The schedule is:

April 1st: non-Wikipedia projects will see this change live

April 3rd: Wikipedias will see this change live

This change is very similar to the "Typography Update" Beta Feature that has been available on Wikimedia projects since November 2013. After several rounds of testing and with feedback from the community, this Beta Feature will be disabled and successful aspects enabled in the default site appearance. Users who are logged in may still choose to use another skin, or alter their personal CSS, if they prefer a different appearance. Local common CSS styles will also apply as normal, for issues with local styles and scripts that impact all users.

so that you can avoid local maintenance and all users can have a functioning, easy upload interface in their own language. All registered users can upload on Commons and existing files will not be affected.

I wanted to let you know that Media Viewer will be released to this wiki in the coming weeks. Media Viewer allows readers of Wikimedia projects to have an enhanced view of files without having to visit the file page, but with more detail than a thumbnail. You can try Media Viewer out now by turning it on in your Beta Features. If you do not enjoy Media Viewer or if it interferes with your work after it is turned on you will be able to disable Media Viewer as well in your preferences. I invite you to share what you think about Media Viewer and how it can be made better in the future.

Media Viewer displays images in larger size when you click on their thumbnails, to provide a better viewing experience. Users can now view images faster and more clearly, without having to jump to separate pages — and its user interface is more intuitive, offering easy access to full-resolution images and information, with links to the file repository for editing. The tool has been tested extensively across all Wikimedia wikis over the past six months as a Beta Feature and has been released to the largest Wikipedias, all language Wikisources, and the English Wikivoyage already.

If you do not like this feature, you can easily turn it off by clicking on "Disable Media Viewer" at the bottom of the screen, pulling up the information panel (or in your your preferences) whether you have an account or not. Learn more in this Media Viewer Help page.

This is a one-time mailing to projects that may need this information. Future newsletters will be available as opt-in only. To receive future newsletters (about one per month), please add your page to the subscribers' list at m:VisualEditor/Newsletter. You're welcome to translate to your language.

Did you know?

The character formatting menu, or "Style text" menu lets you set bold, italic, and other text styles. "Clear formatting" removes all text styles and removes links to other pages.

The VisualEditor team is mostly working to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

They have moved the "Keyboard shortcuts" link out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Within dialog boxes, buttons are now more accessible (via the Tab key) from the keyboard.

You can now see the target of the link when you click on it, without having to open the inspector.

The team also expanded TemplateData: You can now add a parameter type "date" for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format, and "boolean" for values which are true or false. Also, templates that redirect to other templates (like {{citeweb}} → {{cite web}}) now get the TemplateData of their target (bug 50964). You can test TemplateData by editing mw:Template:Sandbox/doc.

They have also improved reference editing: You should no longer be able to add empty citations with VisualEditor (bug 64715), as with references. When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to replace it with another reference instead.

It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor. Remember that inline images cannot display captions, so existing captions get removed. Many other bugs related to images were also fixed.

You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the "Page options" menu, rounding out the full set of page options currently planned.

The VisualEditor team has posted a draft of their goals for the next fiscal year. You can read them and suggest changes on MediaWiki.org.

The team posts details about planned work on VisualEditor's roadmap. You will soon be able to drag-and-drop text as well as images. If you drag an image to a new place, it won't let you place it in the middle of a paragraph. All dialog boxes and windows will be simplified based on user testing and feedback. The VisualEditor team plans to add autofill featuresfor citations. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments and adding rows and columns to tables.

Please read VisualEditor/Citation tool for information on configuring the new citation template menu, labeled "Cite". This menu will not appear unless it has been configured on your wiki.

If you speak a language other than English, we need your help with translating the user guide. The guide is out of date or incomplete for many languages, and what's on your wiki may not be the most recent translation. Please contact us if you need help getting started with translation work on MediaWiki.org.

VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 21:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas and Pacific Islands) or on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 9:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East, Asia).

If you are not able to attend but have a question for James, you can leave your question at mediawiki.org or on my talk page by the day before, and I will try to get a response. We plan to continue these monthly sessions as long as there is community interest, and to announce them through the VisualEditor global newsletter as well (please subscribe your talk page there to get the latest news about the software).

Most of the VisualEditor team will be at Wikimania in London in August! You'll be able to meet the developers during the Hackaton or at the following sessions:

WMF community liaisons will share a booth with community advocates at the Community Village and look forward to talking to you there. Thanks for your attention! --User:Elitre (WMF) 16:02, 31 ngônda ya nsambwâdi 2014 (UTC)

The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.

Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.

You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.

All references and footnotes (<ref>tags) are now made through the "Cite" menu, including the "Basic" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "<visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip>" is still added via the "Insert" menu.

When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.

All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.

The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.

The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.

The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30. There is a VisualEditor Translation Sprint going on during Wikimania; whether you're in London or not, any contributions are welcome!

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

I am notifying you that a brainstorming session has been started on Meta to help the Wikimedia Foundation increase and better affect community participation in software development across all wiki projects. Basically, how can you be more involved in helping to create features on Wikimedia projects? We are inviting all interested users to voice their ideas on how communities can be more involved and informed in the product development process at the Wikimedia Foundation. It would be very appreciated if you could translate this message to help inform your local communities as well.

I and the rest of my team welcome you to participate. We hope to see you on Meta.

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals for funding new experiments from September 1st to 30th. Your idea could improve Wikimedia projects with a new tool or gadget, a better process to support community-building on your wiki, research on an important issue, or something else we haven't thought of yet. Whether you need $200 or $30,000 USD, Individual Engagement Grants can cover your own project development time in addition to hiring others to help you.

VisualEditor will become available to users of Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 during today's regular software update. Support for some earlier versions of Internet Explorer is being worked on. If you encounter problems with VisualEditor on Internet Explorer, please contact the Editing team by leaving a message at VisualEditor/Feedback on Mediawiki.org. Happy editing, Elitre (WMF) 07:29, 11 ngônda ya yivwa 2014 (UTC).

TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.

With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.

There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that replaced some categories with a link to the system message MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.

Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.

Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.

The tool for editing TemplateData has been deployed to 30 more Wikipedias this week. Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template page or a subpage, and then click the "Manage TemplateData" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.

VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect and mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these types of links can be created.

Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358).

Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir attribute but no lang set (bug 69955).

At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community is available. Thank you all for your work.

This was the first translatable VisualEditor newsletter, so thanks to everybody who made this possible! If it hasn't been delivered in your language, and you'd like to help with translations in the future, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre (WMF), so that you will be notified when the next issue is due.

We would like to hear what you think on both proposals. Both are in English; if you wanted to translate them into your native language that would also be appreciated.

It is possible for individual projects to opt-out, so that users in those groups do not have any additional rights on those projects. To do this please start a local discussion, and if there is consensus you can request to opt-out of either or both at m:Stewards' noticeboard.

AbuseFilter is a MediaWiki extension used to detect likely abusive behavior patterns, like pattern vandalism and spam. In 2013, Global AbuseFilters were enabled on a limited set of wikis including Meta-Wiki, MediaWiki.org, Wikispecies and (in early 2014) all the "small wikis". Recently, global abuse filters were enabled on "medium sized wikis" as well. These filters are currently managed by stewards on Meta-Wiki and have shown to be very effective in preventing mass spam attacks across Wikimedia projects. However, there is currently no policy on how the global AbuseFilters will be managed although there are proposals. There is an ongoing request for comment on policy governing the use of the global AbuseFilters. In the meantime, specific wikis can opt out of using the global AbuseFilter. These wikis can simply add a request to this list on Meta-Wiki. More details can be found on this page at Meta-Wiki. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on m:Talk:Global AbuseFilter.

VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Log in and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings button in the upper-right corner to pick which editor to use. Choose "Edit" to use VisualEditor, or "Edit source" to use the wikitext editor.

It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.

The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available on the mobile website.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.

Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in them was just introduced to Wikipedias. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be added later.

To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus are now hidden behind a "More" item, such as "Underline" in the styling menu.

The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias this week, and the following week at the English Wikipedia.

The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.

VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.

The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar menus are now shown in the menus.

Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search engine could not find the page. A link inside a template to a local page that does not exist will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to an error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [16] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.

The tool for quickly editing TemplateData has been deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool was already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Manage TemplateData" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData to learn more about it. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common value for that parameter. The autovalue can be overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.

In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog box in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.

The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill featuresfor citations soon. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.

The user guide is being updated to add information about editing tables. The translations of the user guide for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you! —Elitre (WMF)

Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team.00:22, 18 ngôida ya kûmi na zôle 2014 (UTC)

You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Basic support for editing tables is now available. You can add and delete tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ^ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.

You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1." or "#" will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change.

There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ^ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

The current VisualEditor design will be replaced with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at mediawiki.org in late December and on other sites in early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

Translations of the user guide for most languages are outdated. Only Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translations are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.

Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.

File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you!

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins.

Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.

The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:

starts a new task, like opening the Save page dialog: blue ,

takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,

might remove or lose your work, like removing a link: red , or

is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window: gray .

The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor. (T67815, T73746.) This change fixed a couple of existing bugs and improved usability. (T73077, T73078.)

Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once.(T78234.)

Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedia requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace. (T86688, T87027.) If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.

The Editing team will soon add auto-fill featuresfor citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.

We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.

Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC); information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins, and you can also contact James F. to learn more about this initiative.

Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.

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--The Wikipedia Library Team 21:14, 2 ngônda ya tatu 2015 (UTC)

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